The colorful fountains were built during the height of the Great Depression. The Falls was the brainchild of William Sparks, who made a fortune from car horns and radios. The Falls is modeled on a fountain in Barcelona, Spain.

Those little questions we ask at the end of sentences to confirm what we already know are called "tag" questions – because they tag onto the end of a sentence to turn it into a little question at the end.

It could be something like, "You can speak Chinese, can't you," where you get that little confirmation question at the end.

University of Michigan English Professor Anne Curzan says we also get invariant tags, like "You can speak Chinese, right?"

Curzan says the tag "right" shows up in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1939.

Bill Bonds, an iconic Detroit broadcaster who also worked for ABC stations in New York and Los Angeles, has died.

His longtime employer, WXYZ-TV, reported that the former reporter and anchor died Saturday after suffering a heart attack.

Bonds had worked for the ABC affiliate from 1963 to 1968, then returned in 1971. The station terminated Bonds' multi-year contract in 1995 following a drunken driving arrest.

Born in 1933, Bonds was inducted in 2010 into the Michigan Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Last year, the Michigan chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences presented him with an award in recognition of his long WXYZ career.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is a big-deal writer who has won some fancy awards, including a Pushcart Prize, and she was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in fiction. Poor and working-class rural women are at the heart of many of her stories. Michigan Radio's Kyle Norris recently got a chance to ask her why she writes about these women.

Campbell is putting the finishing touches on her next book of stories. It will be called "Mothers, Tell Your Daughters," and will be published next fall.

The Michigan Supreme Court has decided some 52 cases this year and dealt with judicial misconduct, but we will soon see a change in the bench. Justice Bridget Mary McCormack joined us.

Kevyn Orr is expected to resign on Wednesday after signing the order sealing Detroit’s bankruptcy. Daniel Howes with the Detroit News wrote a column indicating Orr’s tenure as Detroit’s emergency manager could have been a lot more divisive.

Mean and hostile comments seem to be everywhere, and on every online story. Cliff Lampe is an associate professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He’s worked with little outfits such as Facebook and Wikipedia, studying community engagement. We talk with him about snarky comments in the digital age.

It has been two years since the Michigan Legislature passed the right-to-work law in the lame-duck session. What effect has the new law had on the state? We talk with Patrick Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group, and Charles Ballard, an economics professor at Michigan State University.

On Dec. 14, 1799, the nation’s first president, George Washington, died at his home in Mount Vernon. It was not an easy death primarily because of the medical treatments he was given. Dr. Howard Markell is a physician and medical historian at the University of Michigan and he’s written an essay about Washington’s death.

To get high school students more excited about woodworking, an industrial arts teacher and a gym teacher got together and came up with a new kind of class. Kids can make their own longboard, skateboard, surfboard, snowboard, or skis. The class at Forest Hills Eastern High School in Grand Rapids is called Gone Boarding. We talk with shop teacher Bruce Macartney and gym teacher Bill Curtis.

From Failure Lab in Grand Rapids, Tom Nardone, Internet entrepreneur and creator of the Mower Gang in Detroit, describes unsuccessfully launching an online company to prevent head lice. He talks about what prevented his success, and shares advice of what to keep in mind when launching a business.

There is a rise in wines made and named after celebrities. There is Fergalicious named after singer Fergie, and there's rapper Lil John, who started Little Jonathan Winery. And there's Michigan's own Madonna, whose family owns the Ciccone Vineyard up north.

Orbit Magazine was a staple in the Southeast Michigan area for its coverage of local music and art. In honor of it’s 25th birthday, Orbit is the subject of a new coffee-table book, Re-Entry: The Orbit Magazine Anthology.

The author, Rob St. Mary, is a Macomb County native who now works as a radio reporter for Aspen Public Radio.

Author, filmmaker, and conservationalist James Oliver Curwood was a Michigan native in the late 1800s whose stories gained popularity all over the world. When he died in 1927, he was said to be the highest-paid per-word author in the world, with much of his passion for writing about nature coming from a close encounter with a grizzly bear.

Like ballet companies across the nation, the Grand Rapids Ballet is gearing up for that beloved holiday ballet, The Nutcracker. But this year's production it will have a new look, thanks largely to Chris Van Allsburg.

Van Allsburg is the renowned writer and illustrator of children's books. He's won two Caldecott Medals for his illustrations for The Polar Express and Jumanji. Both books were turned into successful films.

An Ann Arbor area Girl Scout troop wants the makers of LEGOs to change how their toys portray women.

Lizzy Blackwell, a member of Troop 40466 and now a seventh grader, said that some of the girls have enjoyed playing with LEGOs, but they noticed a lot of gender stereotyping in them.

Blackwell said it's a problem that LEGO's action series characters – like police, superheroes, pilots, and construction workers – are all male. "I'd like to see them portrayed in an equal way with women being shown as being just as capable as men to do these sorts of things," she said.

As you plan your Thanksgiving meal, what is the one dish that represents your family? Maybe it’s one that's been handed down through generations.

The New York Times recently ran a piece that highlighted a recipe collection called The United States of Thanksgiving. Each recipe, the authors wrote, evoked each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The recipe that evoked Michigan, according to the Times, was German potato salad.

More economists are telling us that the gap between the haves and the have nots is growing in America. Michigan State University economics professor Charlie Ballard joined us to talk about this.

The holiday shopping crush is about to begin. We talk with two marketing professors about the psychology behind Black Friday.

Michael Jackman spells out the history of fire in Detroit for his story in The Metro Times.

How is it that Michigan has the largest Muslim population in the United States? Sally Howell, an assistant professor of history and Arab American studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn explains.

It's widely accepted that Michigan has the largest Muslim population in the United States. Sally Howell explores the religion's history in Michigan in her book Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past.

Islam has a long history in America that is often overlooked. Howell says many Muslims came as slaves from West Africa to pre-civil war America with no freedom to practice their religion, and many of their traditions were lost.

The Nain Rouge. Detroit's little red hobgoblin. The harbinger of doom and disaster.

The legend of the Nain Rouge goes back to the very earliest days of Detroit's history as a French settlement.

Now, the story of the Nain Rouge is being told through a series of fiction books, a graphic novel and a planned short film. Josef Bastian is the writer and creator of the Nain Rouge Trilogy and the Nain Rouge Graphic Novel. Bastian is a partner in Folkteller Publishing with Carl Winans, who is a producer and digital story-teller.

Although the art installation's brainchild wasn't saying much about the fire, he was sending a message by standing out front of the house cleaning up what he could: He's standing strong and not going anywhere.

"Mother Teresa said, 'what you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build it anyway,' " Guyton said. "That's all I want to say."

He declined to say whether any suspects have been spotted on the organizations security cameras.

EAST LANSING, Mich. - The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University is teaming up with an Istanbul-based art organization on an exhibit that explores student debt in higher education.

The exhibition entitled "Day After Debt: A Call for Student Loan Relief" will be installed in spaces throughout the East Lansing museum from Sunday through April 12. The Broad is working with Protocinema on the project initiated by Kurdish artist Ahmet Ogut.

Museum officials say the exhibition responds "to the debt culture that has grown around the demand for higher education" as well as "the pressures that it places upon graduates."

Organizers say the works include a collection box composed of shredded U.S. currency and a transparent plastic bag accompanied by a humorous hierarchy of donation levels.

Matt Jones on his new album; Sundance execs come looking for Michigan filmmakers

Welcome back to ArtPod, the arts-obsessed home for Michigan’s movie, music and book lovers.

Here’s what we're talking about right now:

1) Matt Jones. The Ypsilanti indie-rocker with a cult following, a great new album (arguably his best yet) and a serious Civil War obsession. We’ll talk with him about alcoholism, getting through a self-destructive phase, depression and making great music with people you love.

2) But first, let’s go back to a story that was just cool and different and got some press in the papers but nothing that really did it justice.

But the real news isn’t Dallas so much. It’s that there’s talk of even more competitions in cities across the country. And it means that ArtPrize in Grand Rapids will make money from licensing the brand to those cities.

In ArtPrize, the public votes for the winner. Juried prizes are awarded too. Those juried prizes have been getting bigger each year. Winners get cash. More than $500,000 was awarded to the winners this fall.

Tony Lucca has had long and fruitful show business career, from becoming a finalist on the second season of NBC’s “The Voice,” to his early start as a Mouseketeer in the 1990 season of The Mickey Mouse Club.

The Waterford native talked to us about how his Michigan roots have influenced his music and what he has planned for his show Saturday at the Magic Stick in Detroit.

As Stateside goes tableside, let’s talk about how we talk about food! Why do the words "foodie," "delish," and "yummo" drive some people crazy? Margot Finn is a lecturer at the University of Michigan, specializing in food and popular culture.

Finn says she finds it interesting that people would take offense to certain food words such as "nom" or "yummo." Finn thinks it could be a result of trendy or edgy people rejecting a word when it becomes more widely used in pop culture.

Finn says there's a long history of food as status symbol. The snobbery and elitism foodies are accused of may have roots in the use of food to confer status. Listen to our interview with Finn below.

Matt Jones is a singer/songwriter from Ypsilanti. He’s also a big Civil War nerd. The Civil War inspired many of the songs on his latest album, called "The Deep Enders."

Today on Stateside, Matt Jones on how the history of the Civil War influences his work.

Tune in at 3 p.m. to hear Jones on the show.

One big influence, he notes, is the relationship between Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson. When General Jackson died in 1863, General Lee was forced to think about how he was going to fill that hole in his life. Jones’ song, "Bountymen," explores this theme of losing someone or something and not knowing how you’re going to replace it.

"The Darkest Things," another song from "The Deep Enders," was the first song Jones wrote for the album.

Jones says this song stems as much from his own personal struggles as well as the Civil War.